The Six Messiahs - Mark Frost [192]
Doyle walked back to them, holding a pair of rifles.
"Do you still know how to shoot?" he asked Eileen.
"I haven't forgotten much of anything."
"Good," said Doyle, handing her a rifle. "Then follow me."
As the city collapsed, so too did the white shirts' organized pursuit of the two intruders; Frank and Kanazuchi raced ahead of the fire through the southern side of town, shadowing the escorted group of children. They passed the workers' quarters where Kanazuchi had spent die night and drew within sight of the cathedral; the wide gap separating it from the shanties had acted as a firebreak, so neither the church nor any of its surrounding structures was in any immediate danger.
As the children marched over the open ground to the church, Frank and Kanazuchi realized they had no chance to attack and kill their escorts without endangering the children. They hung back at the supply shacks and watched as the children folded into the white shirts outside the cathedral, moving obediently along with the crowd through the entrance. With most of the town's population, including the armed militia, now secured inside, the doors to the cathedral slammed shut behind them.
"Wrong time for the Sunday sermon," said Frank.
The bells in the tower stopped ringing. As the echoes faded, they heard only the windborne moaning of the fire.
Kanazuchi gestured and led Frank closer, to a tool shed on the edge of the work area. As they ducked inside, an assembly of guards wearing black trotted toward the church from a number of different directions and fell into a defensive formation across its entire facade.
Frank counted nearly fifty of them.
The men in black lifted and slid thick wooden bars through brackets on the cathedral doors. Frank and Kanazuchi looked at each other, asking the same question: Why are they locking the doors on this side?
Cornelius Moncrief stepped around the side of the church. A squad of men in black rolled the Gatling guns on their caissons into position, facing out, protecting the cathedral doors; one at the front, one at either side entrance. Another team pulled the fourth gun around to the back.
Cornelius glanced at his watch, gave another order, and three-man teams who appeared to know what they were doing took their places at each of the gun positions.
"All this for us?" asked Frank. "I mean, we're good, but—"
"Not for us," said Kanazuchi.
"Maybe they saw something. Maybe the army's coming for its guns."
Frank saw an alarming idea enter Kanazuchi's mind.
"This way," he said.
They backtracked from the work area near the cathedral entrance and followed the men pulling the last machine gun to the rear. Frank and Kanazuchi settled in behind one of the high mounds of rocks and debris above the path and watched the men in black pass beneath them, stop and set up the gun twenty feet from the rear doors of the church. Frank turned to look at the sheer wall of rock rising in back of the mounds.
"Nobody's gonna attack from this side," he said, puzzled.
Moments later half of the black-clad guards they'd seen out front ran in and formed a line to either side of the Gatling across the rear of the building. Each man carried a repeating Winchester and an extra ammunition belt; they knelt in firing positions, loaded and cocked their guns. Then the team manning the machine gun wheeled the muzzle around and aimed it directly at the rear doors.
"Want to tell me what the hell you think's going on here, Hammer?"
"They are going to kill them."
"Who?"
"The people in the church."
Frank paused. "That's just plain crazy."
Kanazuchi looked at him and nodded.
"And I suppose you think we ought to stop 'em."
"Yes."
"That's what I thought. Shit."
Frank looked off toward the south, past the reddened horizon.
"Mexico," he said quietly.
"What did you say?"
"I said what part of the river are we in now?"
Kanazuchi smiled slightly. "Most treacherous part."
"Suppose you got an idea 'bout how we're gonna